Multiple Exposures Gallery (MEG), a cooperative fine art photography gallery located in the Torpedo Factory Art Center in Alexandria, Virginia, currently has two membership openings — one permanent membership and one limited term membership through January 31, 2018 — for which they are issuing an open call.

Information sessions

Information sessions will be held at MEG on Saturday, January 7th, and Sunday, January 22nd, from 10am-12pm for photographers interested in learning more about the gallery and our selection process. Topics to be covered include: the benefits of MEG membership; roles and responsibilities of a MEG member; expectations for sales; displaying your work at MEG; the application and portfolio submission process and timeline; and “best practices” for submitting a portfolio for membership consideration.

The information sessions, which are optional, will be held at MEG in Studio 312 at the Torpedo Factory Arts Center, 105 North Union Street, Alexandria, VA 22314. You may RSVP for either information session by sending an email to MEG Vice President Eric McCollum.

Application process

To be considered for membership, photographers must complete a four-step process:

Notify Eric McCollum of your intention to apply no later than January 28, 2017.

Deliver a portfolio of work to MEG between February 4-7, 2017 between the hours of 11am-5pm.

Meet with a minimum of three and maximum of five MEG members before February 23, 2017.

Pick up portfolios at MEG between February 24-27 during the hours of 11am-5pm.

Key documents

Below are key documents to review and the application for membership that must be submitted with the portfolio of work:

"Today
another oak falls in the jungle of bitter exile," began the eulogy for
the man whose bloodlines my children and I carry on.

Florencio
Campello Alonso died today at age 90 in Miami, the heart of the bitter
Cuban Diaspora. Like many Cubans of his generation, he was the son of
European immigrants to Cuba. His Galician parents left the scraggy
mountains of northern Spain's ancient Celtic kingdom and in the first
decade of the 1900s migrated to the new nation of Cuba upon its
liberation from Spain.

Galicians
have always been uneasy subjects of the Spanish crown, stubbornly
hanging on to their ancient Celtic traditions, to their own language and
to their bagpipes, so it is no historical surprise that they left their
mountain homelands en-masse and headed to the new tropical paradise of
Cuba, free from the heavy hand of the Spanish monarchy.And
thus it was never a surprise to me that my father was both a fighter
against heavy-handed rulers, a lover of freedom, and one who was never
afraid to re-start a life for the better, even if it involved discarding
the old.

My
father could have been one of the privileged few who currently rule
atop the food chain of Cuba's Workers' Paradise. But instead of
accepting the benefits of oppression, this most valiant of men chose the
harsh path of right over wrong.

And he paid for it dearly (he spent years in Concentration Camps), but when he died, his soul was clean.

In
his youth, my dad worked the brutal hours of the son of an immigrant
who was slowly building a small financial empire in eastern Cuba. My
father was pulled from school as soon as he learned to read and write,
and like his two other brothers and eight sisters, he was expected to
work and contribute to building a familial empire.

And
he did, as my mother relates the stories of my father's childhood in
the fields of eastern Cuba, a blond creole in a land of jingoist
natives... he trying to out-Cuban the "real Cubans"... how he organized a
labor union of the exploited Haitians who worked almost as slaves at
the Los Canos Sugar Mill, how he joined a group of bearded rebels in the
mountains of the Sierra Maestra in the fight against a tyrant, how he
ran for the leadership of the Sugar Workers' Union and beat the
Communists to the post, and how he spent years in a Castro Concentration
Camp, jailed for the crime of refusing to join the Party, because he
believed in Democracy and not Communism.

And
because of that stubbornness, in the 1960s he was offered the bitter
pill of exile, and this brave man decided to choose family... and left
his birth place, and thus became another immigrant within two familial
generations and brought his wife and child to another new land.

And
it is to him that I owe the greatest gift that a father can give a son:
the opportunity to grow in freedom in the greatest nation in the
history of this planet.

It is because of my father's courage that I was raised in this country and not in a land bloodied by brutality and oppression.

It
is because of my father's teachings that I was raised with the
conviction that freedom is not free and never to be taken for granted;
after all, he fought for freedom and then Castro, the man who inspired
the fight, ended up being a worse dictator, eventually destroying all
notions of freedom for all of his people.

It
is because of my father that I was taught that every citizen owes his
nation some form of service, and that's the main reason that I signed
(at age 17) to serve in the US Navy. It is because of my father that I despise anyone who hides behind the mask of victimism to excuse failures and shortcomings.When
our family arrived in New York in the 1960s, my father began to work in
a factory three days after he landed at the airport; my mother (who
came from a privileged Cuban family and had never worked a day in her
life) found a job as a seamstress five days later. That pattern was
repeated for decades as they worked their way in a new nation."We
thought we'd be back within a few years," was the answer given to me
when I once asked the question about leaving their birthplace. When that
didn't materialize, they became fierce Americans in the "United States
of Americans" sense... these were the "America None Better!" set of
immigrants, and in my Dad's case, you better be ready to fight if you
dissed the USA.

"Americans"! Always a fighter he was... and always for the right reasons.Cubans
are archaic immigrants... we love this great nation because we
recognize its singular and unique greatness; perhaps it is because our
forebears had the same chance at greatness and blew it.And
my Dad loved this nation even more than he once loved Cuba... perhaps
it is the genetic disposition of the serial immigrant. After all, his
father had left his own ancient Celtic lands and kin for a new land...
which he learned to love dearly.My father always wanted to make sure that I knew that I was an "Americano" and not another forced-on label."Labels," he'd say, "are just a way to separate people."By labels he meant "Hispanic" or "Latino" or anything with a "-" between two ethnic words.I
also remember as a kid in New York, when he bought a huge Hi-Fi record
player-color-TV console... that thing was huge. He bought it "lay-away"
and he'd pay $10 a week to the store and him and I would walk all the
way from our house on Sackman Street to the store on Pitkin Avenue to
make the payments every Saturday - he never missed a single payment, and
that taught me a lesson.

It
was soon playing my Dad's favorite music, which oddly enough was
Mexican music (Cuban music was a close second)... and he knew all the
words to every charro song.

That
Jorge Negrete song... being shouted often on weekends at the top of his
lungs from our apartment in a mostly Italian neighborhood in East New
York in Brooklyn must have raised some eyebrows.My
dad and I watched Neil Armstrong land on the moon on that TV set... we
also watched loads of Mets games... and in 1969 and 1972 went to Shea
Stadium to see the Mets win in '69 and lose in '72. He really loved
baseball and he really loved those Mets!When
I joined the Navy at age 17, my first duty station was USS SARATOGA,
which at the time was stationed in Mayport in Florida, so my Dad decided
to migrate south to Florida and moved to Miami... just to be close to
me.He and my mother spent the next 40 years in the same apartment while I was stationed all over the world.When
I visited him today in Miami, he looked good and freshly shaven... this
is a good thing, as my father was a freak about hygiene... and that's a
common "creole" trait.

The Hospice nurse almost teared up when I told her that my parents have been married for 60 years. I
looked at this old "gallego"... his skin as white as paper, his eyes as
blue as the sky, and his head (once full of blond hair) as bald and
shiny as the old Cuban sing song ("Mira la Luna, mira al Sol... mira la calva de ese.....")
and I saw the generations of Neanderthals, Denisovans and Gallego Homo
Sapiens that led to my bloodlines... the generations of fighters, of
strugglers, and of tough guys who didn't take no for an answer and who
made a better place for others. And I felt at peace and grateful.And
as my father died tonight, after an extubation, all that I can think
to say to him is "Thank you for your courage... from me, and from my
children... and soon from their children. You opened a whole new world
for them."

I love you Dad... Un Abrazo Fuerte! Thank you for your gifts to me and my children and it is no coincidence that you died on El Dia de Los Reyes.